Falling for My Ex’s Mafia Dad — Episode 35
Kent took Ivan Kozlov’s card from Fay and closed his fist around it. Lorenzo claimed he had never met the Russian, but the speed of his denial made the lie obvious. Rain streamed from the cottage roof while the alliance fractured again around a name neither don wanted to explain.
Fay demanded the truth before entering either man’s car. Kent said Ivan led a syndicate expanding through the East Coast, buying officials where possible and destroying families where money failed. Lorenzo added that Ivan collected leverage before introducing himself. The card was not an invitation; it was proof that he already considered Fay useful.
“Useful for what?” she asked. Kent answered with brutal simplicity: her blood connected two Mafia dynasties, her engagement could stabilize the city, and her death could start a war. To a third power seeking entry, she was treaty, hostage, and weapon in one body.
Lorenzo promised no Russian would touch his daughter. Fay reminded him that Colin had been abducted by a man Lorenzo hired. Fatherhood did not become protection merely because he said the word with conviction. Lorenzo flinched, but she felt no victory.
They returned to the Lippert estate before dawn. Colin received stitches in the infirmary while Daniel remained beside him, their hands openly linked. Kent stationed guards at the door and instructed them that Colin’s protection carried the same priority as Daniel’s.
The order traveled through the house faster than any formal announcement. By breakfast, every captain knew enough to understand that insulting Colin would be interpreted as challenging Kent. Fear created a temporary acceptance where compassion had failed. It was an imperfect shield, but Daniel moved through the corridor with his head higher, and Colin no longer released his hand when footsteps approached.
Fay found Kent alone in his office, turning Ivan’s card beneath the lamp. She asked whether he intended to lock her away again. He said he intended to keep her alive. She placed their signed agreement on his desk and reminded him that survival without agency was not the life she had negotiated.
Kent proposed cancelling the family visit scheduled for that afternoon. Fay refused. David and Janeen had already been dragged into danger because of her hidden parentage, and disappearing without explanation would deepen their fear. She agreed to a protected meeting on the estate instead of leaving.
Her parents arrived through the service entrance in an armored car. Janeen embraced Fay so tightly that the protective detail looked away. David held her afterward, quieter but no less desperate, and asked whether she truly wanted the engagement he had heard announced through lawyers rather than his daughter.
Fay could not give him the honest answer. She said the arrangement protected them and that Daniel was her friend. Both statements were true, yet together they constructed a lie. Janeen noticed the distance between friendship and marriage but did not challenge her in front of armed strangers.
Kent joined them for lunch. He addressed David with respect and answered practical questions about security, finances, and Fay’s ability to continue her career. His composure made him seem almost like an ordinary future relative, until David asked whether Fay was free to leave.
Silence settled over the table. Kent looked at Fay rather than her father. She said she was negotiating that freedom. David’s jaw tightened, and he told Kent that a woman did not need to negotiate ownership of herself.
Kent accepted the rebuke without retaliation. He said the danger was larger than any of them had understood and that he had made mistakes while responding to it. Fay knew how much the admission cost him, especially before a man with no criminal power to compel humility.
After lunch, Janeen walked with Fay in the garden. She asked whether Daniel was the man Fay watched whenever the room went quiet. Fay’s gaze betrayed her, drifting toward Kent’s office window. Janeen followed it and went pale.
Fay denied an affair, but her mother heard the omission surrounding the words. Janeen warned that attraction to a powerful older man could feel like safety while slowly replacing every independent choice. Fay said she knew the danger. Janeen answered that knowing a fire burned did not stop people from stepping closer in winter.
A delivery van approached the outer gate before Fay could respond. Security records showed flowers ordered in Daniel’s name for Colin, and the guard cleared the first checkpoint. Kent emerged from the house as the van rolled toward the courtyard, his attention sharpening at once.
He shouted for everyone to get down. The side panel of the van opened, revealing a gunman behind a mounted weapon. Kent crossed the garden before Fay processed the danger and threw himself over her and Janeen as bullets tore through the pergola.
Lippert guards returned fire. David dragged Janeen behind a stone planter while Fay pressed both hands to Kent’s side, searching for blood. He ordered her to stay down, but his voice broke on the final word.
The van crashed into a fountain. The surviving attacker swallowed something before guards could reach him, dying with Ivan’s crest tattooed inside his wrist. Kent remained over Fay until the courtyard fell silent.
Only then did she feel the warmth spreading beneath her palm. A bullet had entered below Kent’s ribs, and when she looked into his face, the Mafia king who controlled an entire city whispered her name as if it were the only thing he feared losing.